The Founder of the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology

Fay Fransella was a Visiting Professor at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, and Emeritus Reader in Clinical Psychology, University of London. She has a life-time achievement award for her contributions to personal construct psychology.

Fay Fransella started her working life in 1947 as an occupational therapist. Her first job was at Horton Hospital, Epsom, UK, when it was a war-time emergency hospital. She took a degree in psychology in 1957 at University College, London, and then trained as a clinical psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, staying on there as a university teacher. During this time she came across personal construct theory and gained her Ph D.

Full-time research supported by personal research grants occupied her for the next five years. The most important proved to be the first one from the Mental Health Research Fund to apply personal construct psychology to understanding why some people stutter. That is still one of the very few examples of how personal construct theory and its methods can be used to offer a new theory for a psychological problem as well as offering a personal construct approach to its alleviation. The results of that research were published in her 1972 book "Personal Change and Reconstruction: Research on a Treatment of Stuttering".

Her most influential book, published a year earlier, and co-authored with Don Bannister was Inquiring Man (1971). It is now published as an e-book by Taylor & Francis.

In 1977 she convened the first international congress on personal construct psychology at Oxford, UK. These congresses have continued to the present day, taking place every two years.

In 1980 she went to the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, University of London, as a Senior Lecturer. She was awarded an Emeritus Readership in Clinical Psychology by the University of London prior to her retirement in 1989.

In 1981 she then set up in London the first world centre to focus on the dissemination of George Kelly’s ideas. In 2001 she was appointed Visiting Professor in Personal Construct Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. In September 2006 the university honoured her by organising a day’s conference to celebrate her 80th birthday.  To read more about the history of the Centre, please click here.

Fay Fransella died after a short illness on 14th January 2011.
 

Fay Fransella

1.10.1925 to 14.1.2011

Fransella, F. (1972) Personal Change and Reconstruction. London: Academic Press

Fransella, F. (1995) George Kelly. London: Sage Publications

Fransella, F. (2000) (ed) International Handbook of Personal Construct Psychology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.

Fransella, F., Bell, R. & Bannister, D. (2004) A Manual for Repertory Grid Technique (2nd edition). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons

Fransella, F. (2005) The Essential Practitioners’ Handbook of Personal Construct Psychology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.